Optimal inventory replenishment and shipment policies in a four-echelon supply chain for growing items with imperfect quality

Abstract

Quality control is an important consideration in food production systems which often start with farming and processing operations and finish with consumption. This study develops an integrated inventory control model for a four-echelon supply chain (with farming, processing, screening and retail operations). The farmer grows newborn items and then delivers them to a processor once the items are mature enough. At the processing plant, the items are slaughtered, processed, packaged and screened for quality. The processor then delivers a certain number of equally sized batches of good quality processed inventory to the retailer who satisfies customer demand for good quality processed inventory. The processor sells the processed poorer quality inventory at a discounted price and as a single batch to secondary markets. The proposed supply chain inventory system is formulated as a profit maximisation problem with the number of batches of good quality processed inventory and the order quantity as the decision variables.

Economic growing quantity: Broiler chicken in Morocco

“…Two uniform density functions were incorporated to represent the survival and mortality rates within the model. Makoena Sebatjane and Olufemi Adetunji [22] created a new mathematical model for growing items, this time with four echelons. They added a new stage named the screening period, during which they separated items with good quality from items with poorer quality.…”

An Inventory Model for Growing Items with Imperfect Quality When the Demand Is Price Sensitive under Carbon Emissions and Shortages

“…e next year, Sebatjane and Adetunji [43] built a model for managing inventory in a perishable food products supply chain that begins with farming operations where growing items live and finishes with the consumption of processed inventory. Sebatjane and Adetunji [44] derived an inventory model for a four-echelon supply chain with farming, processing, screening, and retail operations. Gharaei and Almehdawe [45] provided an economic growing quantity (EGQ) inventory model to determine the optimal economic growth and slaughter period and the economic growing quantity to minimize the total cost of the inventory system.…”

Development of Order Quantity Optimization Model for Growing Item Considering the Imperfect Quality and Incremental Discount in Three Echelon Supply Chain

“…Luluah et al [10] proposed a model for growing items with incremental discount and imperfect quality on the farmer side. Furthermore, Sebatjane and Adetunji [11] proposed a growing items model by considering imperfect quality in a fourechelon supply chain.…”

“…Sebatjane and Adetunji [11] conducted a study to develop a model in determining the optimal order for growing items in a four-echelon supply chain by considering the imperfect quality. The study considered a mortality rate during the growth of the items due to diseases, pests (in the case of plants), and predators (in the case of livestock).…”

“…This study developed an optimization model in determining the optimal order quantity for growing items by considering the imperfect quality and incre-mental discounts in a three-echelon supply chain (i.e., farmers, processors, and retailers). In this research, we develop the EOQ model in supply chain optimization for growing items considering the imperfect quality and incremental discount based on the research of Sebatjane and Adetunji [8] and [11]. We extend those researches by adding imperfect quality and incremental quantity discounts in purchasing newborn items from vendors to farmers and final products from retailers to consumers for specific amounts of purchases.…”